


Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground

by Ulthar



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky is screwed up, Flashbacks, Gen, Music, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sam only wants to help, if you are looking for blues guitar you are in the right place, if you are looking for sexytimes look elsewhere, music therapy, rated Teen because THERE IS ONE WHOLE SWEAR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 11:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ulthar/pseuds/Ulthar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I just really wanted Bucky to play slide guitar with his metal hand.  It turned out more serious than I intended.</p><p>The sad soldiers are together, but on the run, after the events of Captain America 2, and Bucky is having trouble adjusting.  Sam finds him a resonator guitar, desperately hoping music therapy will help.</p><p>I appologize if I wrote anything hopelessly inaccurate about the history of American popular music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground

“I’ll break it,” Bucky muttered, looking down at his left hand.  It still felt strange to him—or rather, it was only beginning to feel strange to him, and that was a strangeness in itself.  The more he fought to chip memories out of a mind that seemed half frozen over, the more he felt unbalanced, wrong, chilled where the metal touched flesh and clumsy when he moved.  He knew the circuitry responded perfectly to his thoughts, but when you are the ex-Winter Soldier, your thoughts are, at the very best, an absolute mess.

“What?”  Sam Wilson had left him for maybe twenty minutes, not very long.  Steve didn’t like leaving him alone, and Bucky knew it was for the best.  Since their little outlaw band trusted no one, Steve tended to leave him at Sam’s apartment when there was something he needed to do alone.  This time, Sam had ducked out, saying there was something he needed to get, leaving Bucking sitting on the couch.  When he came back, his face was calm, but his eyes were dancing.  A part of Bucky’s mind, the part that had never been frozen away, was watching those eyes for signs of a threat.

“I’ll break it,” he said again, trying desperately to shut out the Soldier’s voice.  _Sam is not your enemy_ , he insisted.  _It’s not a machine gun in that case, you idiot_.

“Maybe you will,” Sam shrugged, flipping open the latches and pulling out an acoustic guitar with a metal disk where the sound hole should have been.  He plucked a few strings to check the tuning, then held it out to Bucky.  “But you have to try it first.  Anyway, it was cheap.  Don’t worry about it.”

Bucky took the instrument, carefully, first with his right hand.  He set it in his lap and gingerly lowered the neck toward his left hand.  It touched the metal with a soft _clunk_ , and Sam gave him an encouraging nod.  When his fingers brushed the strings, they let out an ugly scraping whine, and he recoiled.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Bucky said, pulling his left hand away.  This thing was _loud_.

Sam laughed at that, the same way Sam always laughed: easily, like a man who had been through hell and had somehow put it behind him, and had since seen everything with new eyes.  Bucky had only known him for a few weeks, and most of that time had been spent running and hiding and fighting, but Sam always found something worth laughing about.  They had never talked much—Bucky suspected Sam didn’t quite know what to say to him, yet, and was waiting until he did—but Bucky thought he knew a lot about him just from that laugh.

“You ever hear of slide guitar?” Sam asked, smiling in his mysterious, crooked way.  Bucky shook his head, and Sam grinned wider, sitting down beside him and opening his laptop.  “I’m not surprised; white people didn’t really find out about it until the 50’s or so.”  He clicked through a couple of web pages, then pulled up a video.  It showed a skinny white guy with a similar guitar—part wood, part steel filigree.  When he hit the strings, it wasn’t with the soft twang Bucky had heard on the radio as a kid, or with the electric howl he’d gotten accustomed to recently, but a distinctly metallic sound, half driving rhythm and half vocal wail.  Bucky noticed the metal tube he was wearing on his left ring finger, sliding it up and down the neck rather than fingering chords, and he thought he knew where this was going. The style was new, but it reminded him of some of the jazz they used to play in dance halls.  Jazz you usually needed a band for, though.  This he could do alone.  He liked that idea.

“Now, I’m not going to try and force you,” Sam said when the video ended, “but I think it’s time you learned to play the blues.”

 

* * *

 

 

Sam didn’t actually know enough guitar himself to teach Bucky to play, but he helped him find a few lessons online and generally hovered in the next room, out of the way but ready in case Bucky needed help with anything.  He thought it would be good for Bucky to have something to occupy both of his hands, and concentrating on the music might help him clear his mind some. 

It seemed that his prosthetic was as precocious with guitar technique as it had been with advanced martial arts.  It took a bit of trial and error for him to get his finger to hit the strings right—as in, without making the dobro scream like a robotic cat—but it was only a few minutes before the metal hand had apparently calibrated itself to the exact pressure and positioning of a basic blues progression.  His right hand was clumsy by comparison, but as Sam watched from the kitchen, Bucky started—awkwardly, haltingly, almost painfully—to play, and for the first time in weeks, Sam felt a tiny bit relieved.

Steve hadn’t actually found Bucky, in the end; Bucky had found him, stumbling into one of their safehouses out of the blue, unable to say anything coherent, his eyes full of terrified understanding.  His recovery had been slow and unsteady.  He still barely talked; mostly, Steve talked to him, about anything and everything, and clung to him like a child he was afraid to lose, which seemed to comfort both of them.  The clinging had turned to restraining as often as not, though those episodes were gradually growing less frequent.  Sam had felt helpless, unable to either start a conversation with him or pin him down.

Bucky had eventually reached the point where a seemingly inconsequential wrong move was no longer likely to cause him to black out and start attacking people, but he still didn’t _do_ much of anything.  It reminded Sam of Steve when they had first met.  He wondered if there was some correlation between being a military experiment and not having hobbies.

Bucky was worse, though.  Steve would at least work out, or watch TV, or _talk_ to you.  When Sam was left to babysit the new guy, he tended to sit on the couch and stare, and it drove Sam nuts.

Now, though, he was finally _doing_ something, and Sam was making a pot of coffee and praying it would last.  By the time the coffee had brewed, there were strains of something that sounded vaguely like Robert Johnson coming in through the open door.  It probably sounded more like Robert Johnson before he sold his soul to the devil for talent, but it was a start.

Sam poured two cups of coffee.  He had long since given up on asking Bucky whether he wanted coffee, or anything, for that matter.  He never asked for food, and would always say “sure” if it was offered, and then he might eat it, or might not.  Sam poured some milk into one of the coffees and took it into the living room.  Bucky looked at bit odd: a pale, cyborg assassin with stringy hair and haunted eyes, hunched over an old resonator guitar in fierce concentration while he plucked out a stumbling turnaround note by note.  Odd, Sam thought, but somewhat fitting.  He set the coffee down quietly and left.

He was back in the kitchen before he realized that Bucky hadn’t even noticed him come and go, and when he did, he started grinning like an idiot.  He almost laughed out loud, but he stopped himself, not wanting to break the spell.  For weeks, all he had wanted was for Bucky to relax, and now, while he wasn’t exactly calm, he at least wasn’t watching every door like an army was going to burst through it.

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky didn’t know how long the coffee had been there by the time he put down the guitar.  He took a sip.  It was cold.  He didn’t really care.  He stood up, stretching his back and flexing his right hand, and looked around the room.  Sam was out of sight; he walked to the window and stood there for a few minutes, watching the street.  People walked by.  He examined each and every one of them as they passed, analyzing their faces, clothes, tiny, unconscious movements.  There was no one he recognized, no one who displayed any signs of being a threat, no one who turned to notice the weapon in the window.  Not that he looked much like a weapon anymore, but looks could be deceiving.  He was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans borrowed from Steve, both slightly too big.  There was a time, he remembered, that the thought of Steve’s clothes being bigger than his would have had him on the floor laughing.  That would have happened, he thought, if they’d survived the war long enough to think about it.  He could picture Captain fucking Rogers, smirking and rolling his eyes in that combination of _you’re adorable_ and _are you done yet, I have the weight of the world on my shoulders_ that only he could pull off, covered in medals and watching as little Sergeant James Barnes giggled helplessly into his beer.  Now, he couldn’t laugh about it, not after what he’d been through—after what they’d both been through.  They had both been made into weapons, experiments, both made to betray themselves and everything they’d believe in.  One side had used force and one had used lies, but it was all the same in the end.

That idea had been in his head for a while now, but he’d only been able to articulate it now.  He wondered if he should tell someone.  Sam would want to know.  Sam would try to turn it around into something uplifting, and he might even succeed, but Bucky didn’t want to be uplifted right now.  The truth was ugly, but he was seeing clearly for the first time in seventy years, and he was going to stare it down.

He made himself look at his prosthetic hand for a good while, watching the metal plates slide smoothly over each other, listening to the nearly silent whirr of the hardware inside, feeling how the synthetic nerves registered pressure and movement almost but not quite like flesh.  _It could have been beautiful_.  The realization made him grit his teeth.  It could have been beautiful, but instead it was caked with blood.

He had to look away, then, to keep the memories at bay.  _German tourist in Argentina.  Car sabotaged, rigged to explode.  Four bystanders injured._ He checked the doors.  Sam was still out of sight.  _Research facility in New Mexico.  Head scientist killed first—crushed windpipe._ He glanced out the window again.  People passed by, unconcerned. _Family of four.  Shot in their home, execution-style.  No witnesses_.  He paced the length of the room, pleading with the Soldier, with himself.  _Not here.  Not now._   He picked up the guitar.

Bucky made himself breathe, slowly.  He struck a chord, let it ring, tried to drown out his own thoughts.  Mechanically, he went back to the progression he had been practicing.  _C…F…C…G…repeat.  Forget everything.  C…F…C…G.  Don’t forget to breathe._

 

* * *

The first thing Sam heard was guitar, louder and more confident than before.  The changes were even now, slow but forceful, the wail of steel-on-steel harsh and eerie, but beautiful, in a way.  It took him a moment to realize he was hearing something else as well.  He left his bedroom and went back to the kitchen doorway, where he stood and stared in disbelief.  Bucky was singing, more or less.  Really, he was kind of humming along to the chords, but as Sam listened, it became simple, wandering, wordless melody.  His voice was a husky _aah_ , a scream turned into a sigh, and his eyes were screwed up, either in concentration or a stubborn refusal to see.  It didn’t sound sad, not exactly, not quite.  It was beyond sadness; it was weary but defiant, a mess of emotions so conflicted that it came out as gray, numb.  Sam wanted to laugh, as if this were some sort of victory.  Instead, he slid down the wall and sat in the doorway, his head in his hands.

He was still sitting there when Steve came back, looking exhausted and a bit bruised, but probably carrying the names and addresses of half a dozen HYDRA agents they would be tracking down next.  Bucky stopped playing and looked up at him when he came in, the chord he was on dying off, unresolved.  Steve stared at both of them, looking worried.

Sam stood up and tried to say something about everything being fine, and he didn’t really succeed, but it placated Steve enough that his worried face was replaced with confusion.  Eventually, Sam managed to grin and say, “Did you know your boy could play guitar?” but he knew his cheekiness was hollow, and his smile didn’t reach his eyes.  He probably looked terrified.  Bucky was putting the guitar back into its case, getting ready to leave.  Sam had always been a bit unnerved by how Bucky followed Steve like a well-trained dog—heel, sit, come, stay.

Because they were also well-trained, Sam and Steve exchanged pleasantries, and some intel about the next phase of their plan.  Sam knew he would forget everything, and Steve probably guessed as much.  Then the old soldier turned to go, back to wherever he was hiding tonight, and he motioned for Bucky to follow.

But Bucky turned to Sam.  He motioned towards the guitar case.  “Can I…uh…?”

It was the first time Sam had heard Bucky speak without being spoken to.  It was the first time he had known him to ask for _anything_.  He nodded, suddenly mute himself, drowning in unexpected relief.

When they had gone, one carrying a battered old guitar case in metal fingers, he cried.  He cried, smiling, at the sudden thought that there might be hope for them in this war.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The song Bucky sings is meant to be similar to an old recording by Blind Willie Johnson, after which this fic was named. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNj2BXW852g


End file.
